The present invention relates to a unit-price presetting method for electronic cash registers and, more particularly, to a unit-price presetting method for electronic cash registers that can preset the same unit-price data easily and rapidly in a plurality of electronic cash registers provided electrically independently of one another.
In registering the sale proceeds, it is heretofore a usual but troublesome practice liable to error to depress amount keys equivalent to numeral keys every time a commodity or article is sold, to depress a multiplication key and numeral keys if a plurality of commodities or articles are sold, and to depress commodity or article keys or department keys. Accordingly, some of the cash registers equipped with unit-price memories are so constructed that the unit price of each commodity or article may be preset in the memory and thereby registration may be made by depressing only the commodity key corresponding to the commodity sold; in this case, the unit price of each commodity or article is preset by depressing the amount keys equivalent to numeral keys and then by depressing the commodity key, and the data once preset are kept stored in the memory unless they are intentionally erased. In the above registers, the unit price of the commodities stable in price such as medicines can be used for a long time if once preset, however the unit price of the commodities such as perishable foodstuffs subject to daily unit-price change must be preset in each memory everyday before the office is opened with the result that the unit-price presetting time is increased. In addition, there are many other factors which cause price changes; for instance, the unit price must be changed when goods are purchased on the judgement of the branch office itself in addition to on the basis of the instructions from the head office (control center, etc.), when goods are for sale at a discount or at a special price, when goods left unsold are for sale at a discount, when goods on sale at a discount are returned to the normal price, and when the branch office itself judged it necessary to adopt a strategic price in rivalry with other dealers in the same commercial district. Thus the frequency of unit-price presetting is very high, and accordingly the frequencies of input errors and troublesome checking are so much increased.
Besides, there is also provided a system in which each register is connected to a computer or the like installed at the control center so that the unit-price presetting operation for each register may be omitted. However, this system is large-scale and very expensive, being not suitable for small-scale operations such as unit-price presetting for each register at each branch or each shop; thus, in the case of commodities liable to price change must be preset by operating the keyboard of each register after all.